Two of the most commonly misunderstood hosting terms are bandwidth and disk space. Understanding what these resources are, how they affect your website, and how to monitor them is essential for choosing the right hosting plan and keeping your website running smoothly. This guide provides a thorough explanation tailored to SakuraHost customers.
What Is Disk Space?
Disk space (also called storage) refers to the total amount of data you can store on the hosting server. This includes all of your website files, email messages, databases, logs, and backups. Think of disk space like the storage capacity of your computer's hard drive: every file you add takes up a portion of the available space.
What Counts Toward Disk Space?
- Website files: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, videos, PDFs, and other media uploaded to your
public_htmldirectory. - Email data: All emails stored on the server, including inbox, sent items, and attachments. Large mailboxes are one of the most common causes of unexpected disk usage.
- Databases: MySQL databases used by content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, or custom applications.
- Logs: Access logs and error logs generated by the web server.
- Backups: Any account backups stored within your hosting directory.
What Is Bandwidth?
Bandwidth (sometimes called data transfer) measures the total amount of data transferred between your hosting server and your visitors' browsers over a given period, typically measured monthly. Every time someone visits your website, the server sends page files, images, scripts, and stylesheets to their browser, and each byte transferred counts toward your bandwidth allocation.
How Bandwidth Is Consumed
Consider a webpage that is 2MB in total size (including all images, CSS, and JavaScript). If 1,000 visitors view that page in a month, you would use approximately 2GB of bandwidth just for that single page. Multiply this across all pages and visitors, and you can see how bandwidth adds up.
Factors That Increase Bandwidth Usage
- Large images and media: Unoptimised images are the single biggest contributor to high bandwidth consumption.
- Video content: Self-hosted videos consume enormous bandwidth. Consider using YouTube or Vimeo embeds instead.
- High traffic volumes: More visitors means more data transferred.
- File downloads: If your site offers downloadable files (PDFs, software, archives), each download counts toward bandwidth.
- Email attachments: Sending and receiving large email attachments uses bandwidth.
How to Reduce Disk Space Usage
- Optimise images: Use tools like TinyPNG or Squoosh to compress images before uploading. Convert to modern formats like WebP where possible.
- Clean up email: Regularly delete old emails with large attachments. Configure your email client to remove messages from the server after downloading.
- Remove old backups: Delete local backups stored in your hosting account. Use SakuraHost's automated backup system instead.
- Database optimisation: Use phpMyAdmin in cPanel to optimise and repair MySQL tables. Remove spam comments, post revisions, and transient data from WordPress databases.
- Delete unused files: Remove old website versions, test files, and installation archives from
public_html.
How to Reduce Bandwidth Usage
- Enable compression: Add gzip compression via
.htaccessto reduce the size of transferred data by up to 70%. The Apache mod_deflate documentation provides configuration details. - Leverage browser caching: Configure cache headers so returning visitors load resources from their local cache instead of downloading them again.
- Use a CDN: A Content Delivery Network like Cloudflare distributes your content across global servers, reducing bandwidth on your origin server.
- Optimise media delivery: Use lazy loading for images and embed videos from external platforms rather than self-hosting.
- Minify resources: Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files to reduce their size. Test results using Google PageSpeed Insights.
Checking Your Usage in cPanel
cPanel provides several tools for monitoring your resource usage:
Choosing the Right Plan
When selecting a hosting plan at SakuraHost, consider your current needs plus room for growth. A small business website with optimised images typically uses under 5GB of disk space and 50GB of monthly bandwidth. E-commerce sites and content-heavy platforms may need significantly more. Review our plans at billing.sakurahost.co.tz to find the right fit for your requirements.